Trollope is actually a good plotter when you realize that his people are everyday people going through their everyday lives doing everyday things.
Still and all, he never wrote anything that you'd read just for the plot. For the characters, and for what happens next to them, but not so much for what happens next, period. You'd never see a horde of New Yorkers descending on a dock and screaming, "What happens to Lady Glencora?!?"
I love both these writers dearly, but in my brain they live in completely different spaces and hit different pleasure centers. Trollope is for people and lives and choices, good and bad, that are utterly familiar and utterly true; Dickens is all about endless invention, characters almost larger and more real than regular humans, and showoffy grandiose storytelling for storytelling's sake. The wild coincidences aren't asspulls, they're integral to the unlikely glory of the entire improbable enterprise.
Anyhow, in my brain.
Good God, for the first time in forever I want to go back to school. Somebody stop me, for the love of all that's holy.
You don't want to do that. Homework sucks.
That is why I don't want to do that.
That and not secretly being a lost Kerry girl(but oh, the sense my life would suddenly make)
Catching up on this conversation hours later...
Vonnie, was it you mentioned that the Beeb was doing/has done a Bleak House adaptation?
Yeap. Infinitemonkeys mentioned it on her LJ and I got on the UK.nova and have been downloading the episodes. (I don't think it's available on US torrent sites yet, although I haven't checked.) Four episodes so far, and I like it fine, although it's rather more sluggishly paced than "Out Mutual Friend", which merrily frothed along. Gillian Anderson plays Lady Dedlock with a kind of languid desperation (sounds like a oxymoron, but you'll see what I mean).
Netflix has all 12 discs of the 1974 version of Pallisiers, by the way. I have to confess, the only Trollope I have read is Joanna, and Anthony. I know, I know. Woeful. And Netflix wants me to rent an early 80's adaptation of
The Barchester Chronicles,
which I am rather tempted to do because it has very young Alan Rickman.
For Nutty, some none-slapstick fun movies:
Hmmm.
Frothy old B&W movies:
Any Preston Sturges:
The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, Sullivan's Travels, Unfaithfully Yours
Most Howard Hawks:
Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, To Have and Have Not & Big Sleep.
You've probably seen these.
Any Ealing Comedies:
Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lady Killers, The Lavender Hill Mob, Passport to Pimlico, etc.
Stylish imports:
Such a Long Engagement, Babette's Feast
(man, I loooove this one),
Black Orpheus, Diva, The Horseman on the Roof
(very swoony melodrama, love in the time of cholera, yada yada, but very pretty to look at),
The Girl on the Bridge, Insomnia
Recent-ish (like, last 20 years) mainstream-ish stuff off the top of my head that you might like:
The Big Lebowski, Midnight Run, SHAUN OF THE DEAD!, Cold Comfort Farm, The Tao of Steve, Zero Effect, Stage Beauty, Truly Madly Deeply, The Whold Wide World
(as long as you are not totally anti-Renee).
Cellular
(goofy but fun),
The Talented Mr. Ripley
(which you've likely seen and my GOD, this is such a Nutty kind of a movie.)
This may be my favorite BBC Dickens adaptation, full-stop.
I'm finding the current adaptation of
Bleak House
absolutely fan-f*ing-tastic. Really, really, incrediably good. Near-perfect casting. Soap-opera-style setup (half an hour twice a week). Love Lady Scully and don't find it sluggish at all (they're setting up loads and loads of stuff which you know is going to get payoff soon). Wish it were on more often.
I second all of Vonnie's recommendations and add the original version of The Singing Detective, which, if you haven't seen, you must.
Oh, yeah, wrod.
The Singing Detective rocked my world.
I'll have what she's having...(except in this case, I have, thanks to Hottie Editor friend.)
For Nutty, some non-slapstick fun movies:
Vonnie wins prizes for seeming to know pretty much what I like and don't. Not many misses on that list, although several I have seen and/or just returned to Netflix 2 weeks ago and/or own.
Clearly, there is such a genre as "Nutty kind of movie".
Clearly, there is such a genre as "Nutty kind of movie".
Ha. Guess "Talented Mr. Ripley" was a hit, then? I was thing of things that are lacerating yet restrained, melodramas in minimalistic strokes.
Hmmm, that reminds me. Netflix doesn't have a lot of early James Mason, but they do have Carol Reed's "Odd Man Out", which is essentially James Mason dying in slo-mo for two hours. Strikes me as something you might dig. *g*
It's a pity Netflix doesn't have a lot of Carol Reed. Well, it has "Agony and Ecstasy", which I don't like much. And of course, "The Third Man".
On a completely different note, apparently Anna Friel (who played Bella in the aforementioned Beeb adaptation of "Out Mutual Friend" and is living with David Thewlis, who plays Lupin) made some noises about wanting to play Tonks in the next Harry Potter flick, which the director was quick to nix. I wonder why? I've only seen her as Bella and in this other flick with Michelle Williams called "Me Without You" (about toxic female friendships, and rather well done, I thought) and I think she'd make a fine Tonks.
